


Machiavelli can wait

by Ladyboo



Series: Press white for unleaded [1]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: College AU, Multi, Pre-Relationship, Supernatural Elements, non-superhero verse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-20
Updated: 2019-04-20
Packaged: 2020-01-20 16:09:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,350
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18528499
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ladyboo/pseuds/Ladyboo
Summary: He just wanted to finish his homework before the sun came up. He didn't want Bucky throwing shit, he didn't want Darcy late for her shift again, and he sure as shit didn't want something screaming from the freezer, but Pietro rarely got what he wanted.





	Machiavelli can wait

**Author's Note:**

> I needed something fun? this is gonna be a series, tell me what you think!

A prince with a strong city who found himself unhated by his subjects would never be attacked, and she came in on a honeyed cloud of floral ginseng. Smeared eyeliner like she’d been rubbing at her face and her hair a mess of curls on the top of her head, Darcy looked as put together as she ever did this late at night. She must have been presentable at some point in her day, the fat smudge of black around her lidded eyes couldn’t be permanent, but he couldn’t picture her as anything other than a hot mess. 

“You’re late.”

Pink lips pulled into a snarl, gapped teeth and narrowed eyes, she breezed past him with swaying hips and the same bad attitude as always. 

“Get fucked, Maximoff.”

Bitter, bitter, he rolled his eyes down at Machiavelli and listened to her disappear back into the staff office. Mouthful of grape slush that sloshed across his teeth, everything syrupy sweet and cold and Pietro smacked his lips together at the taste. 

“That’s Barton-Maximoff,  _ princeza _ , but thanks, maybe later.”

A clatter from the coolers, he couldn’t see Bucky but he could hear him loud and clear with how he dropped one of the crates of soda. It hit the floor with a rattle, he hoped nobody opened those drinks any time soon, and he took another swallow of his own. 

“It ain’t even 2 am yet, can y’all not start this shit?” 

He’d never get used to the sharp fast cut of that tongue or the way his r’s seemed to just disappear when they shouldn’t have. He’d never been to Brooklyn, and Pietro wasn’t really sure he wanted to. He’d seen how Bucky drove, and he’d listened to the man talk enough, full bodied with his hands and a slurring mouth and he couldn’t imagine an entire city of people like that. 

“What shit? She’s the one that’s late.”

“An you’s the one pokin’ at her. Ain’t nobody in this station got time for that.”

Raised voices to talk to one another over the shelves that separated them, he wondered just what it was Darcy did back in the office. Took off her coat and hung it somewhere probably, maybe tried in vain to fix the makeup smudged all across her face. If he was lucky, she’d have started the coffee pot. He hadn’t seen her set her own cup down though, wasn’t sure if she had even brought it, and depending on her mood there may not be coffee for a few hours yet. 

“ _ She’s _ the one that started it.”

He needed to learn how to work the stupid coffee pot. Bucky never gave him a straight answer on if he knew how or not, and everything was fine until 4 am rolled around and Darcy refused to brew another pot sheerly out of spite. It’d happened before, surely it’d happen again. 

“An I’m the one that’s fuckin’ finishin’ it. We don’t know what she’s got goin, and she fuckin’ don’t ask what you got, and I want to get through a single fuckin’ shift without the two of you tryin’ta shit on each other.” A milkcrate visible over the top of an aisle, thrown there by a disembodied, irritated voice. As if Bucky had seen the precipice of his breaking point, and Pietro took another swallow of his slush. “Sweet Jesus, two a ya are worse than fuckin’ Stevie.”

A page turned, chapter 11 and Machiavelli went on to discuss his concerns about the church and its principalities. Bold words for a man of his time, surely Medici would have been proud of the homoerotic obsession he had spawned, but Pietro couldn’t focus on his homework when he could see the byproduct of Bucky having a fit back by the cooler wall. His fault, Darcy would be all too happy to point out that it was once again  _ his _ fault that Bucky hadn’t made it through a shift without throwing something, without breaking something. 

“Okay.”

He didn’t understand why it was such a big deal. Not when the other man got that look on his face where his grey eyes were stormy bright and his jaw set, Pietro had never seen a problem with that expression. 

“ _ Okay? _ You gonna greet her with a damn attitude, and then you gonna give me an  _ okay _ ?” His eyes were lightning strike brilliant even with the length of two aisles between them, Pietro could see it from where he stood as the sole survivor behind the counter. Sure enough, his jaw had clenched, chiseled and strong beneath his midnight shadow that seemed to always be perfectly in place. A milkcrate clattered to the ground and booted feet stomped up through the aisle toward him, he’d done it now. “Did nobody teach you any God damn manners?”

Nearly clipped his shoulder on the aisle as he came, and Pietro straightened from where he’d bent over his textbook and slush. Backed away from the counter, left the book where it lay and took a step back for every step that Bucky took toward him. 

“Fuck you runnin’ for, Piet?”

“This isn’t running, this is tactical retreating at its finest.”

“Oh, at its fuckin’ finest, huh?”

Back to the office door and it pushed open with his weight and a little force, Bucky just pulled himself up onto the counter rather than going around it. The door swung further open like it’d been pulled from the inside and his body tipped backwards through the open space. Arms pinwheeling to try to catch himself just in time to watch Bucky’s feet hit the floor and the man’s eyes go wide, Darcy cried out behind him,  _ beneath _ him. 

That was her he’d landed on then, her stomach or her tits. He couldn’t be sure but Pietro knew enough to know he shouldn’t have been there at all for all that Darcy was indeed just as soft as she looked. She smelled better up close, wood smoke and floral bubbling, he couldn’t really appreciate it like this though. Not with her hands shoving at his head and shoulders, her knees kicking beneath his back as she tried to force him off just as quickly as he rolled to the side.

“Can’t fuckin’ do anythin’ by halves, Christ almighty.”

Bucky caught her by her forearm before it was even really offered and Pietro watched her sneakered feet come clean off the ground as she was pulled up. Her hands caught on Bucky’s shirt for just a moment, long enough to catch her balance before she pushed herself back and to the side, twisted about so she could stand next to him. Smeared eyeliner, hair half fallen out of its looping twist and she glared at him like the Queen she seemed to think she was. Haughty as ever and he heaved himself to his feet with a hand on the doorframe. 

No words from her sharp mouth, Darcy had to glare  _ up _ at him and she did so for a good minute before twisting on her heel. 

“What, nothing to say,  _ princeza _ ?”

A single middle finger in the air, hips swaying as she walked away from them and around the counter. She disappeared down an aisle like she owned it even though he knew damn well that the little pharmacy shit and other hygiene clutter didn’t need restocked again. Just above the aisle, he could see the door for the back room swing open even though he couldn’t see her head, and he huffed just in time to watch a pained, exasperated expression flood over Bucky’s face. 

“We ain’t in elementary school, cease fuckin’ fire.”

“What?”

He didn’t bother keeping eye contact when he passed, he’d gotten to chapter 11 but he needed to get to 18 before the end of his shift so he could do the remaining eight over a late breakfast with his sister via skype, so he could do the study guide before Friday so he could be ready for the test on Monday. His slush hadn’t moved, none of his book pages were even wrinkled and Pietro just got a hand on the counter so he could lean when Bucky crowded against him. 

“Stop pullin’ her damn pigtails like you’re gonna get your dick in it. That shit don’t work on anybody worth more than a sloppy fuck.”

A choking sound in the back of his throat that garbled around his teeth, he spun about just in time for Bucky to lean in close to reach for something on the overhead shelf. Chest to chest, the other man was taller and there were streaks of an icy pale blue throughout his eyes, he didn’t think he’d ever get over that. He stared at Pietro like their proximity meant nothing to him, the man had never seemed to understand just what personal space meant even if Pietro’s poor fucking heart wished he would learn. 

_ “What?” _

“A sloppy fuck. Ain’t nothin’ wrong with it if that’s your one and done sorta shit, but Darce seems like the sorta girl that you wouldn’t wana leave all high and dry like that, if you can manage t’leave.” He said it so fucking casually, invading Piet’s space like he  _ did _ this kind of thing all the time, made worse by the fact that he  _ did _ do this all the time. Like he didn’t know what that voice of his did to people, like he didn’t know how much of a problem he was. “Just pick a looser cunt to dip yourself in.”

He needed to stop working with gorgeous people who excelled at giving him heart attacks. 

It felt a little lot like he’d started to wheeze, breathing just a little too fast and a little too shallow like running never did to him anymore. Bucky didn’t seem to notice, or maybe he didn’t care, supposedly Steve was asthmatic so maybe it just wasn’t enough to register. Because he just pressed closer like  _ he _ couldn’t reach something, a hand on the counters edge next to Piet’s hip while his hands slapped down on the countertop just for something to hold. Like the other man didn’t stand nearly a head taller than him, like Bucky couldn’t crowd him just by breathing, he didn’t need this tonight. 

Didn’t need Bucky with his jaw that he wanted to kiss or Darcy with her hips he wanted to take in his hands, he had Machiavelli to read, he had an exam to study for. 

“Holy shit, stop ta-”

For everything the seemingly non-existent manager had assured them otherwise, the walk-in coolers in the back were indeed nearly soundproof. Things went quiet and barely above a whisper when the heavy door was closed, compressed layers of insulation acting like an unnecessary silencer. The camera’s had gone out years ago, though management swore they were going to talk to the owners to get them replaced, but that was just what he’d heard from the person that’d interviewed him two semesters ago. 

But the soundproofing only worked if the doors were shut, not if something clattered through them and unleashed screaming into the rest of the station, gone just as quickly as it had come. 

Shrill and crackling,  _ terrified _ and undeniably Darcy for all that he’d never heard her make a sound quite like that and it didn’t seem to end. Spilled into the back hall and cut through the closed glass doors for the drink coolers until they leaked down every aisle before it silenced out like the world could pretend the sound had never happened. Silence for a split second, and then she screamed like she thought she’d die, like something just might make it happen, and he’d never wanted to hear that sound. He wasn’t sure who moved first, which one of them cleared the counter faster even though he made it to the door for that back hall first. 

It only got worse in that hall, the maintenance area for the drink coolers and the mechanical room, the walk in cooler just at the end. A wailing scream accompanied by something else, something roaring right along with her, he could  _ hear _ it. Because the door was open, he could see her curled face down on the floor with her arms thrown over her head, her neck, dark hair spilling across the dirty tiles. The contents of the room flew around her, drink cartons and glass bottles and boxes he knew damn well were heavy.

“Darcy!”

The heavy metal door slammed shut like something had kicked it from the outside and he heard the handle catch, her screaming lost just as Bucky rounded the corner. Just as Pietro himself got hands on the door to try to get to her, and it didn’t budge under his full weight and his pounding fists until it did. Until it flew open with the same force it had closed with, another boom of sound as he listened to her screaming from where she’d huddled on the floor. Couldn’t see her though, not with how he was thrown back into the hall, crashing into Bucky with his feet off the ground hard enough that the impact floored both of them. 

“Jesus  _ fuck!” _

Bucky who’d caught him, kept his head from slamming on the ground with his shoulder. Arms around his middle and Pietro slung across his chest, breathless and heaving, he couldn’t hear her screaming. The door had come open, he knew it had, but he couldn’t hear her screaming.

_ He couldn’t hear her. _

“Darcy!”

The silence died like it’d been cut and Bucky pushed him, or maybe Pietro pushed himself, rolled to his feet and hoisted the other man up in the same motion. The door was open, swinging slowly like it couldn’t be bothered and there she was, slumped on the floor with her hair strewn and and her legs partially pulled up beneath her. Boxes scattered on the floor all around her, overturned crates and a slow growing puddle of slush juice seeping brilliant green across the floor. Quiet apart from the wet gurgle of soda and sugary syrup spilling everywhere, and she didn’t move. 

Broken glass like glitter in her hair and it looked like diamonds, a terrifying beauty under the glowing fluorescent where the bulb had stopped its wild swinging, its strobe flickering like the mayhem had never even happened.

Like his whole world hadn’t turned on its head, like arguably the most ferocious woman he had ever met wasn’t face down on the floor as if she’d been dropped there. 

He got to her first, dropped to his knees into the soda syrup and the sharp bite of glass but Bucky got hands on her first. Bucky took her by the waist before he could, didn’t seem to care about the glass or that she might hit him as he hauled her against his chest, turned her so they could see her face. And her head lulled, rolled without any tension from her neck and his heart seemed to think it could fit itself in his throat at the sight of her slack mouth, her shut eyes. That choking sound was him, all caught up and wet and he watched the way Bucky shook her, watched her head rattle and her sad excuse of a bun teeter loosely. His hands on her jaw then, anything to make her head stop doing that, to keep her still even as Bucky jostled her more like he thought that would change anything. 

“Darcy, Darcy doll c’mon, you gada-”

_ “Stop shaking her!” _

Loud, his voice echoed in the cooler around them and Pietro was startled at the bite of his own voice. 

Pungent, cloying, the smell of rotting meat seemed to filter up through the cement floor and he hadn’t eaten in hours but he knew what vomit tasted like from too many nights spent in a house party bathroom. He gagged with it, wanted to cover his mouth but Bucky didn’t give him time, surged to his feet with Darcy against his chest and a fistful of Piet’s shirt in the other hand. Dragged to a stand, yanked into a run before he could even get his bearings and that hand twisted, caught his instead and didn’t give him a choice. 

This wasn’t how he’d wanted to hold the other man’s hand, and he would have been disappointed if he hadn’t been so scared, if the air behind him hadn’t gone far colder than it reasonably should have been. 

“Buc-”

_ “Shut up and run!” _

He couldn’t argue with that, not when there was a rattling, wheezing, alive sound from behind them, something scraping on the walls or the floor he couldn’t tell. He didn’t dare look, not as they rounded the corner and burst through the doors into the main room. Silent, blissfully empty in the after midnight dark outside but Bucky didn’t stop, hauled them through the aisle and around the counter like he’d run this circuit before. Like he’d run like this, like he knew what the fuck he was supposed to do and it started screaming, made him miss a step.    
He would have fallen had Bucky not pulled him along, cutting and wailing and shrill, the windows rattled and the door quaked and his heart felt like it was going to burst as the older man pulled them hastily into the office. As he let go of Piet’s hand, as he whirled around and shoved the unconscious Darcy against his chest, made him scramble to catch her even as Bucky tore into the closet just past the managers desk. 

“What the fuck is that!”

“Little busy!”

The heavy bag of road salt scooped up onto his shoulder quickly, a corner torn open from where they hadn’t used it since mid February. He slung it around like this was normal, something unnatural screeching from the front of the store on a path toward them while Bucky scattered salt along the line of the door. He shouldered past then on a sprint, shoved Piet and his precious, limp armful into the desk so hard everything rattled just so he would dump another thick line of it across the emergency exit door in the far back of the narrow office. Like that was all he needed and he dropped the bag at his feet, stuffed both hands through his hair and spun around to stare at the front of the office with a wild, wide expression. 

The screeching hadn’t stopped, but the doors didn’t rattle anymore, and it didn’t come any close, as if something had gotten in its way. 

“What the  _ fuck _ ?”

Spat out harsh and high, thin, Pietro kept himself busy with how he clutched her to his chest, fucking ignored the way her head still rolled and one of her arms trailed toward the floor. It didn’t matter, she was fine, she was safe because he had her and that was all that mattered. Bucky’s gaze snapped to him, looked at him like he’d only just realized that he wasn’t alone and Piet watched the way his throat worked when he swallowed. 

“What?”

He couldn’t wave his hands like he wanted, not with something precious clutched to his chest and there was a gnawing, growing anxiety in his chest compounded on his fear for how dead weight she was still. He’d never known her to be so still, forever a sway to her hips and a little dance to her step when she didn’t think anybody was watching, silence didn’t suit her, alien and unwelcomed on her skin. Nothing was right, there was an eerie, hair raising constant of sound from just past that door and Bucky stared at him like he didn’t get what the big deal was. Like this was something that just  _ happened _ , like this was nothing to phase him. 

“What do you mean  _ what _ ? There’s a-what the fuck even is that!”

A little hysterical maybe, just a touch beyond himself but he’d left his textbook out there damn it, that shit was expensive. 

“Poltergeist from the smell. Standard ghosts aren’t usually that angry, not unless they’ve been brutally murdered or didn’t actually pass on like they were supposed to.”

What the  _ fuck? _

His grip slipped a little on Darcy and Pietro shifted, sat back on the desk just enough that he could hold her in his lap with her head on his shoulder. He worried less about her neck like this, he wasn’t going to drop her like this, he could get a grip on her for something to do with his hands so he didn’t fucking strangle Bucky like he wanted. 

“Who the fuck are you?”

Bucky just blinked at him for a second, fingers still buried in his hair where it’d fallen forward from its stupid old man vintage cut. 

“A folklore major?”

The sound he made was high, strangled, Bucky didn’t know just how fucking lucky he was that Darcy and her nonresponsive self came before perfectly valid murder. 

He just gathered her close instead, probably the only chance he would ever have to hold her and buried his face in her soft curls. She still smelled honeyed, floral fizzy ginseng now muddled by the sticky of slushy syrup, of spilled soda and there was the lethal glitter of broken glass tangled up in her hair still. He used her like a shield, something for Bucky’s protection from how he wanted to hit the other man for his stupid, vague response. 

“Okay Indiana, why did you grab fucking sidewalk salt?”

And Bucky sighed, shook his head a little on an aborted motion and caught his shoulders mid shrug, fingers still all caught up in his hair like he didn’t know what else to do with them. Pietro had a couple ideas, adrenaline thick in his veins sending his blood places it shouldn’t and he shifted his grip on Darcy, could have sworn he felt her start to stir. 

“Because, salt’s the first line of defense against a lot of things. Like ghosts and poltergeists and most demons from what I’ve seen, I haven’t exactly had a lot of experience on that part.” 

This wasn’t normal, this wasn’t something that happened. He was high, he had to be. That blunt he’d smoked a few before his shift hadn’t worn off yet, maybe his friend had slipped something extra in it this time around. He had to be baked on something still because the world didn’t work like this. 

“What the fuck is wrong with you people?”

Rattled and punched, her hand fisted in his shirt and Darcy’s eyes were blue like the deep end of a pool when he looked down at her. A bruise had started to bloom on her cheek, a faint purple tint that bled into the heavy smudge of her eyeliner, she’d never looked quite so beautiful or so fed up. But she held onto him like she wanted to, like she needed to, and Pietro took it, ran with it, kept his grip on her because one of them shook and he couldn’t tell which. 

“What’s that supposed to me-”

“Who knows to use fucking salt on ghosts and shit, oh my God, oh my God.”

“Darc-”

“I’m not drunk enough for this, I’m not even drunk, fuck I shouldn’t have come into work tonight.”

A quiet wheeze, she curled and lifted herself up, up until her face turned up against his throat and a shimmering fall of glitter glass dropped from her hair. Darcy twisted both hands in his shirt and just held on like she didn’t know what else to do, like she didn’t want to do anything else. Carefully, delicate and he shook out the glass from her hair until hopefully all of it clattered to the floor. 

“Now isn’t the time for  _ alcohol _ doll, sweet Jesus. I got uncles, okay? They do this sorta shit for a livi-this isn’t really important okay? I just know, why you gada fuckin question me?”

“Oh great, there’s more of you!”

The two didn’t seem to mind, back and forth like cats that he mostly wanted to ignore because there was nothing past the unlocked office door. Not a single fucking thing, no screeching, no wailing, no clattering sounds as things he would have to reshelf were tossed all about the store, there was just-

Silence. 

The same empty silence as always this time of night, made eerie by the sudden, suffocating lack of undead festering rage and destruction. 

“Guys.”

“Look here doll, not everybody gonna be an only child with a cookie cutter lil fuckin fa-”

“Oh, so  _ that’s _ how you think this i-”

“Don’t see no other way i-”

_ “Guys!” _

His voice echoed in the thin stretch of the office, and two sets of pretty, pretty eyes stared at him. Raised brows, flat pursed mouths, even frazzled and bruised they were beautiful, how was he supposed to survive this job?

“It’s quiet.”

Bucky blinked, Darcy didn’t let go like she couldn’t be fucking bothered to move, and the eldest of them stared at the two at the desk before stepping past. Careful with the salt line he’d made like it couldn’t be disturbed and Bucky pushed slowly at the door. Paused there in the threshold, all broad shoulders and tousled hair looking prettier than he had a right to and the two watched him inhale, his loose fist clench. 

“It’s clean.”

“What?”

Confusion on her voice and her warmth was gone, Darcy swung her legs down and climbed down off his lap, left his hands empty and his heart post panic sore somewhere off its home station in his chest. Left Pietro behind while she pressed herself against Bucky’s back, one hand on his spine to brace herself as she went on toe, peeked past, she’d lost one of her shoes. 

Bucky turned his head to find him though, twisted around until Piet could see those pale, icy eyes and his pupils were blown, mouth a confused kind of loose. 

“It’s just gone, like it didn’t even happen.”


End file.
